It's because you just reached 3202 haste and stacking more at that pont is less valuable than stacking mastery... it's not saying dump your haste though. You need 3202 haste rating for imp DP reguardless of if you get DI or not.

Don't agree, to my research and testing you should get to VT+2 and then go with Mastery. That strategy at worst puts you on par with a haste build to 3202 and is more likely to pull ahead due to 4pc T13 and the use of spike correctly.

Don't agree, to my research and testing you should get to VT+2 and then go with Mastery. That strategy at worst puts you on par with a haste build to 3202 and is more likely to pull ahead due to 4pc T13 and the use of spike correctly.

I got the same results but there are some difficulties regarding this:

Dark Intent: Pulling of a Mind Spike Rotation does hit my DI uptime hard and since our warlock got the legendary, i feel that his dps loss would outweight my dps gain by a bit, speaking of this i couldn't decide if i would reforge to 30% so i don't have to take care of DI and he can give it to another caster or go down to 27% , so my dps gain is equal to his dps loss.

Heroism: It might not be an issue for fights where Heroism fits to the execution phase, thinking that matching a mind spike rotation to SWD would be hard to pull off, but for example on Ultraxion HC we pull Heroism at the beginning when my Shadowfiend is not yet casted so i could end up having bad luck with Fading Light after heroism which would in the worst case destroy the rotation.

I'll still do the Mind Spike Rotation anyway but am now not totally bound to Dark Intent, so i think i will just have to test. As Heroic Spine is far away in the future for me, we don't need that mass of a burst damage at the moment, although when it comes than this will be the day where i am all mastery .

I've noticed that with my current haste and DI (I always get it) I can cast 5 MS after the 1st MB with SF/AA and 4 MS, sometimes 5, after the 2nd MB. So I think Haste works quite good, and works better with multitarget bosses.

I've noticed that with my current haste and DI (I always get it) I can cast 5 MS after the 1st MB with SF/AA and 4 MS, sometimes 5, after the 2nd MB. So I think Haste works quite good, and works better with multitarget bosses.

Kilee has shown in other threads that it's still a net raid DPS gain to use Mind Spike as the loss in DI uptime and damage on both yourself and the warlock is relatively small to the gain in using MS.

Keep in mind that you are only using MS for 10 seconds every 1.5 mins in a best case scenario. Existing DI stacks don't get removed the moment you start using it and if you weave in MF like you probably should so MB gets a 3 orb effect you have a chance to refresh the DI stack on the lock anyways.

a) Some MS cast's don't benefit from any orbs making the DPeT of that spell weak.
b) MB doesn't get to utilise the 3 orbs meaning you are wasting our highest DPeT nuke that has a 100% chance to crit.

Further problems is that we sit with 40% raid buffed haste which is close to the 50% needed for the GCD cap. When you factor in real world conditions like latency and reaction lag, the benefit you get from more haste between 40% to 50% is quite small. You will certainly benefit more from more mastery and thus far simcraft supports that view.

Worshaka, I know Simcraft says mastery > haste. But I think that's because simcraft doesn't multidot. In almost every DS encounter we can multidot and in those cases i think Haste gains importance. Of course, in Ultraxion a heavy mastery build will be stronger, but I also think that in Zon'ozz Hc a heavy haste build is the best choice. And since I'm not gonna reforge for every boss I face (I'm not that pro ) I think a haste build is what I'll make the most of.

Maybe it's true that if I cast more MS then some of them don't benefit from any orb making the DPeT of that spell weaker. But I don't care about DPet but in total damage. If I can cast 4x1200MS (1200 average damage) or 5x1000MS for 6 seconds (MB CD), the second option has a weaker DamagePerSpell but you deal more total damage. Am I wrong? Btw, mb 1-3 MSs don't get the benefit from any orbs but they still get the benefit from AA (+20% dmg).

What's my point? I think 2 extra MS while SF is active + more haste on dots in regular rotation evens the extra damage you could deal having a heavy mastery build while SF is active. As I said, I (prolly) could be wrong.

I'd like to add that having more haste it's easier to me getting the SF sooner (due to Sin and Punishment talent) in order to cast it with AA at the same time.

Worshaka, I know Simcraft says mastery > haste. But I think that's because simcraft doesn't multidot. In almost every DS encounter we can multidot and in those cases i think Haste gains importance. Of course, in Ultraxion a heavy mastery build will be stronger, but I also think that in Zon'ozz Hc a heavy haste build is the best choice. And since I'm not gonna reforge for every boss I face (I'm not that pro ) I think a haste build is what I'll make the most of.

Maybe it's true that if I cast more MS then some of them don't benefit from any orb making the DPeT of that spell weaker. But I don't care about DPet but in total damage. If I can cast 4x1200MS (1200 average damage) or 5x1000MS for 6 seconds (MB CD), the second option has a weaker DamagePerSpell but you deal more total damage. Am I wrong? Btw, mb 1-3 MSs don't get the benefit from any orbs but they still get the benefit from AA (+20% dmg).

What's my point? I think 2 extra MS while SF is active + more haste on dots in regular rotation evens the extra damage you could deal having a heavy mastery build while SF is active. As I said, I (prolly) could be wrong.

I'd like to add that having more haste it's easier to me getting the SF sooner (due to Sin and Punishment talent) in order to cast it with AA at the same time.

At 3,2k haste I can fit in 3x MS and one MF before I cast my mind blast, how much haste do you have?

By your own description of what you do you cast MS 9 times & MB twice (during the MS) + there is 1 more MB with AA being active after you finish using spike.

That is 12 casts that benefit from orbs so at least 2, sometimes 3 will not get orbs applied to them. This is because the fiend melee swings 9-10 times. This isn't the major issue about using it under BL however, the biggest problem is the extra haste takes you well below the GCD cap and you effectively lose 75% of it's benefit. Your MS and MB casts will be about ~1.15, when you get BL they will be in the 0.7 to 0.8 range, however the GCD is capped at 1 sec so that time casting it quicker doesn't actually do anything (other than the reduction of .15 sec).

For this reason you are far better off going with DoTs and MF because these spells benefit from bloodlust's full effect. I guarantee you it will do more damage than the spike/mb rotation. Anytime you get below the GCD by a significant amount MS spam will net very little.

As for haste vs mastery... mastery increases DoT damage so I don't believe it's intuative to think that haste is superior in multi-dot encounters. I also think it's counter productive to get into min/maxing on an encounter by encounter basis. For example, in Alysrasor in FL would have been optimal in a full mastery setup because of the stacking haste buff but a completely different setup would have been required for Majordomo for example. Very few people completely change their gear customisation on an encounter by encounter basis, therefore what our discussions should be relevant is the setup that does good damage on all encounters.

I believe haste to VT+2 then mastery is the correct way to go. If you want to be anal and have the perfect setup for each encounter, well good luck to you.

---------- Post added 2012-02-01 at 08:17 AM ----------

Just to approach this MS spam under BL issue from another angle.

I went looking through some of my past logs and compared the DPS peaks I got under BL with the DPS peaks I got using MS/MB. Under BL I consistently peak ~40K DPS, under MS spam I seem to hit ~50K DPS. Without having those buffs I'm around the ~30K mark.

So what can we deduce from this?

a) Using MS/MB increases my short term dps by 20K over my normal cast rotation.
b) Getting BL increases by DPS by 10K for it's duration.

Now we know for a fact that BL reduces the casts of MS & MB under the GCD so BL is not going to affect MS/MB spam by a considerable amount. Lets just say for this scenario using MS under BL gives you an additional 5K DPS. I think this is being very generous because the vast majority of the BL effect is wasted, you only utilise 8-9% haste from the total haste BL gives you.

Using MS under BL would increase your DPS from 40K to 55K at best which is a 15K jump. Using it outside of BL increases damage from 30K to 50K which is a 20K jump. It's obviously providing a greater effect when I'm not under BL.

At 3,2k haste I can fit in 3x MS and one MF before I cast my mind blast, how much haste do you have?

2964, but I always get DI.

Originally Posted by Worshaka

As for haste vs mastery... mastery increases DoT damage so I don't believe it's intuative to think that haste is superior in multi-dot encounters.

Crit increases DoT damage too so we could believe it's superior than mastery and haste too. Of course mastery improves dots, but imho haste improves them even more. If we hadn't MB, then haste would be our main secondary stat by far. Why is mastery so important now? Because MB is now more important than DoTs. And why haste was more important then? Because DoTs were stronger than MB.

Originally Posted by Worshaka

That is 12 casts that benefit from orbs so at least 2, sometimes 3 will not get orbs applied to them. This is because the fiend melee swings 9-10 times. This isn't the major issue about using it under BL however, the biggest problem is the extra haste takes you well below the GCD cap and you effectively lose 75% of it's benefit. Your MS and MB casts will be about ~1.15, when you get BL they will be in the 0.7 to 0.8 range, however the GCD is capped at 1 sec so that time casting it quicker doesn't actually do anything (other than the reduction of .15 sec).

I'm not talking about BL/Heroism. I can cast 5 MSs after the first SF+AA+MB and 4 more MSs after the second MB without BL. In fact, I try to avoid using SF+AA with BL, I know DoTs scale better with haste than MB... sorry, with BL ;P

After plotting the true value of the stats and posting it in a thread on these very forums I have a good idea just how crit, mastery and haste affect our DPS. Fact is crit has a high diminishing return, ie. the % DPS gain going from 0 to 1% crit is a lot higher than going from 20 to 21%. Haste and mastery do diminish but at a far lesser rate, which leads you do a fair conclusion that the behaviour of those two stats are reasonably closely aligned. Haste has the privso that it rapidly increases and decreases around plataeus but if you take the average effect (which is what you're getting when you sit at a plataeu) it's similar to mastery.

In addition with 4pc T13 we generate more orbs which significantly increases the value of mastery. Furthermore when it's used with a MS/MB rotation we increase amount of effective orbs we generate. To explain that, we might generate 60 orbs but due to them capping out at 3 we might waste 10 of those orb procs and thus only 50 contributed to our DPS. By introducing spells that use up the orbs we increase the amount of effective orbs which is the only number that matters.

To put this into context, in a log where I didn't have 4pc T13 I was able to generate 56 orbs in 4:46 (with DI so 3% more haste than usual which would assist with a higher orb proc rate). In my next log of the same encounter with 4pc T13 I generated 137 orbs in 4:49 (without DI).

That's a staggering difference, meaning you are applying significantly more Mastery damage to MB, and in this case MS. The counter argument to this will be that the log probably just shows raw orb gains and doesn't display what number were effectively used. I'd still wager in effective terms the amount of orbs is significantly more, if not double something approaching that value.

---------- Post added 2012-02-01 at 12:26 PM ----------

How many MS you cast depends on what spell rotation you are going with. There are 3 listed by kilee on howtopriest with some commentary about their strengths and weaknesses. I don't believe any of them have casting MS 4 and 5 times and the one I'm going to explain is the one Kilee has recommended and the one I agree with:

This way your 7 MS casts will get 3 orbs, your 2 MB that are guaranteed to crit will get 3 orbs and you will get 1 further 3 orb MB under AA in the <back to normal> part of your cast rotation. This is because AA lasts 18 seconds and the fiend is only 10 seconds, so the MS/MB phase stops with ~8 sec left on AA meaning you get another MB under AA that people forget about.

If you continue with your current rotation here are the issues:
1) MS is being cast 9 times so it either eats 9 of the 10 orb procs or gets cast without any orbs. Both cases have their own problems, MS without the orbs is weak, casting MB without the orbs is a ton of lost damage. I think I calculated a rough number that you lose out on 50K MB damage when it's cast with no orbs.
2) The 3rd MB that occurs under AA is not guaratneed to hit with 3 orbs. It's also hightly likely by the amount of spells you are trying to squeeze in that MB is being delayed and that 3rd MB doesn't occur under the effect of AA at all. Assuming your 9 MS casts were 1.15 sec + 3 MBs + VT/DP/SW:P + 2 GCD's to MF (meaning you are not clipping at the 2nd clip which also isn't ideal) = 19.55 seconds > 18 seconds of AA duration, not to mention reaction lag and most of us have some sort of reaction lag.

Well, I respect you all theorycrafters at all. You've done so much for us (and for ME ). But IMHO I have the impression that sometimes you get lost in your own numbers and theories. I'm installing a video editing software to upload the opening rotation I recorded last time I faced Ultraxion Hc. But I can tell you now I can cast last MB with 2-3 AA seconds left. And 7 of the 9 MS get 3 orbs and the 3 MBs too. I will share the video asap.

I don't say I'm sure Mastery isn't more important than Haste nor telling you what to do. I say it's not so obvious to me and I'm not sure of that so I'll keep stacking haste because it still works great for me.

So you agree with what I said, out of the 10 orb procs you have a situation where
a) Some of the MS don't get any orbs applied
b) MS eat too many and MB doesn't get any orbs applied.

Anyways this is more about whether mastery or haste is more effecient and as we are talking about MS/MB I'll put it in that context.

First lets understand what haste does to nukes, it allows us to cast faster so we can fit a proporitional amount of extra spells in the same given time. What this means is 1% haste allows you to cast 1% more spells which equates to 1% more damage. Mastery on the other hand increases the amount of nuke damage by a 1.45% per orb, keep in mind that fiend will grant 3 applications per spell so in this scenario 1 mastery will increase the nuke damage by 4.35%.

That alone should show you why mastery is much more effective, of course to take a proper picutre you need to account for the fact that ~102 rating is required for 1% haste and ~160 rating for 1 mastery. Plus there is the effect on your DPS when you are not using the MS/MB rotation, however mastery and haste (excluding plataeu complications) are quite similar and as you should be sitting at a plataeu you can pretty much ignore the fluctuations in haste values.

So sitting at 2964 with DI instead of sitting at 2141 means you could have 823 more mastery rating. That equates to ~ 7.5% more damage on nuke spells during that phase, and by doing this you would be trading it for your two MS casts that have 0 orbs applied to them. An unorbed MS hits for something like 20K, lets say factoring in crit the DPeT of MS(0) is 25K which I'm sure is on the high side, you're gaining about 50K damage from your high level of haste (those 2 extra MS casts).

If you work out the DPeT of MS with 3 orbs assuming you have about 1K mastery and compare it to what you could have, you would increase the damage of MS from ~39k to 45K. So over 7 MS casts you are 7 * 6k = 42k. You also have 2 guaranteed MB crits and I know my MB crits are over 100K each time. So lets for arguments sake say MB crits for 100K with your current mastery value, they would now crit for ~115k which is another 30K more damage.

Simple mathematics tells you that 72k > 50k. There is no doubt in my mind that mastery will yeild far better returns for the reasons stipulated above and this belief is backed up by simcraft stat weights.

Excellent. I love the way you've exposed it, it's very clear, and I almost agree on everything. So the difference between reforging haste or mastery is 22k in every "new rotation"? That's nothing to my eyes when I end up dealing almost 12M dmg to Ultraxion Hc. And here comes what I don't agree with your last post. You say mastery is so valuable as haste when using the regular rotation but I don't feel the same. It might be true that I lose 22k dmg every time we use the new rotation if I stacked haste, but that's my point. I'm pretty sure I go far beyond those 22k in the regular rotation and even more if we can multidot.

I apologise for debatting this with you with my kiddy english but I'm doing my best (English is not my mattern language as you can guess).

Again the evidence is before you, if you're so inclined to disregard it there is little I can do. I can also say that simcraft values mastery far above haste for the 300 delta above VT+2 by a large margin. I think mastery is ~2.2 and haste is something in the ~1.6 for my toon, and simcraft is arriving at that figure after modeling an entire single target encounter. You'd have to provide some reasons backed up with some facts for me to understand why you think simcraft is wrong. Simply saying, but in mluti-target encounters... is simply conjecture.

If I direct you to the spriest guide Kilee has put together, if you look at the graphs you can see that haste dips quite severely after a break point. The next break point is actually 3202 which you're not at, so when you factor in that mastery has an elevated effect due to 4pc T13 you can almost guarantee that your haste value is below that of mastery for our general cast rotation.

If you provide a link to your character i'll even sim you with what I propose vs what you currently have.

So you agree with what I said, out of the 10 orb procs you have a situation where
a) Some of the MS don't get any orbs applied
b) MS eat too many and MB doesn't get any orbs applied.

Anyways this is more about whether mastery or haste is more effecient and as we are talking about MS/MB I'll put it in that context.

First lets understand what haste does to nukes, it allows us to cast faster so we can fit a proporitional amount of extra spells in the same given time. What this means is 1% haste allows you to cast 1% more spells which equates to 1% more damage. Mastery on the other hand increases the amount of nuke damage by a 1.45% per orb, keep in mind that fiend will grant 3 applications per spell so in this scenario 1 mastery will increase the nuke damage by 4.35%.

That alone should show you why mastery is much more effective, of course to take a proper picutre you need to account for the fact that ~102 rating is required for 1% haste and ~160 rating for 1 mastery. Plus there is the effect on your DPS when you are not using the MS/MB rotation, however mastery and haste (excluding plataeu complications) are quite similar and as you should be sitting at a plataeu you can pretty much ignore the fluctuations in haste values.

So sitting at 2964 with DI instead of sitting at 2141 means you could have 823 more mastery rating. That equates to ~ 7.5% more damage on nuke spells during that phase, and by doing this you would be trading it for your two MS casts that have 0 orbs applied to them. An unorbed MS hits for something like 20K, lets say factoring in crit the DPeT of MS(0) is 25K which I'm sure is on the high side, you're gaining about 50K damage from your high level of haste (those 2 extra MS casts).

If you work out the DPeT of MS with 3 orbs assuming you have about 1K mastery and compare it to what you could have, you would increase the damage of MS from ~39k to 45K. So over 7 MS casts you are 7 * 6k = 42k. You also have 2 guaranteed MB crits and I know my MB crits are over 100K each time. So lets for arguments sake say MB crits for 100K with your current mastery value, they would now crit for ~115k which is another 30K more damage.

Simple mathematics tells you that 72k > 50k. There is no doubt in my mind that mastery will yeild far better returns for the reasons stipulated above and this belief is backed up by simcraft stat weights.

So I understand that Having more mastery Increases the Amount of Damage For each Burn Phase But what about the DPS Loss when you are not in that Burn Phase (which is where you Gain from haste the Most)?

I can also say that simcraft values mastery far above haste for the 300 delta above VT+2 by a large margin.

Not in my case.

If I simcraft with our regular rotation, in my case haste is better than mastery so I understand haste is better than mastery in our regular rotation. If I simcraft with the new actionlist, then mastery is better than haste, but I'm not sure simcraft is casting 9 MS in every "new rotation" as I am actually doing. Since I'm losing 22k dmg in every new rotation and let's say I can cast 4 new rotations in every encounter then I'm losing about 100k dmg in a boss that I can deal 11M dmg. That would be less of 1% of my whole dealt dmg... But I repeat, since Simcraft says haste is better than mastery when I use regular rotation, I think I exceed those 100k when not using the MS rotation.

Ah, and I forgot something. If our lock is in the raid and he almost always is, I get the DI. Crit will remain the same but if I reforge to haste it will be easier to give him and keep those DI stacks than if I stack mastery. He'll prolly lose those stacks when using the new rotation so in order to compensate him and, even more important, to improve the whole raid DPS I feel again I must stack haste.

I'm going to sim my current gear with the regular rotation and run another sim heavy reforged to mastery after the extra 2nd VT and I'll share the results with you. Mb you're right about mastery is more important than I think right now even with the regular rotation.